Jul 28, 2017

Bill Graham already had a reputation when the first Trips Festival occurred at Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco in early 1966. He was connected to the Mime Troupe.

I was there at the gate taking the money on the first night at the request of Stewart Brand, one of the three organizers of the Festival ( the others were Ken Kesey and Ramon Sender). Stewart knew I was a banker and we knew each other from the Portola Institute and the San Francisco State College Education Fair that I had put on.

The festival was too exciting. I couldn’t be at the gate taking money when there was so much fun going on. I asked Bill Graham who I knew as the business manager of the Mime Troupe to handle the money. He was known to be honest about money.

When he saw the overwhelming size of the hippie crowd and the wild music from the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Jefferson Airplane he was hooked. He joined with a good friend of mine, Chet Helms to start putting on hippie concerts. Graham continued that direction the rest of his life.

Chet was a gentle, tall, kind true hippie who brought Janis Joplin to San Francisco. Graham promptly screwed Chet when Graham got control of the Fillmore Rock Auditorium and told Chet to go to hell.

A few years later, after Chet had been running the Avalon Ballroom successfully, he came to me with a political problem. The City wanted to shut down his ballroom because the neighbors (imaginary people) said the noise was too loud and the crowd was making a mess. (All untrue. The building had super sound insulation and Chet cleaned the sidewalks meticulously.)

Chet had already hired a lawyer to fight the issue at the Board of Permit Appeals. The lawyer was Michael Stepanian who was a partner with Brian Rohan. Both were stoned hippies and pretty much useless. I told Stepanian to keep his mouth shut and say what I told him to say. Which he did.

I knew the Board members and approached several of them, me, a bank vice president, and explained that Chet Helms was a hard-working decent honest guy. His operation was clean and well run. I had the majority of votes for Chet at that point.

Then, into the Board room walked Bill Graham in a hippie clown outfit and said boisterously that he was the leader of the hippie music scene and said he had a handful of telegrams from prominent bands who supported Chet and the Avalon Ballroom. He threw the telegrams at the Board chair and walked out.

The Board was made up of ordinary San Francisco straight politicians. One was the president of Olympic Savings and Loan.

I knew at that moment we had lost. And we had.

Nearly a decade later the lead minister at Glide Memorial Church, Cecil Williams, where I was the business manager, had arranged with Quincy Jones to put on a concert on behalf of Glide Church. We got the Cow Palace that can hold 10,000 comfortably. It was certain to be a sell-out.

Cecil assured me that Bill Graham, a good friend of his, would not put on any competitive performance the same night. Of course Graham did just that with another black pop-jazz composer. We had to scramble to get 5,000 people just to look decent. Most of the 5,000 were from Jim Jones’ People’s Temple brought in buses.

In the end Bill Graham died by his own hand in a helicopter accident. Flying with his girl friend, Melissa Gold, wife of Herb Gold a friend of mine, on a very foggy night when his salaried pilot said it was too dangerous to fly; Bill told him to fly or be fired. They ran into a 115,000 volt power tower and were fried.

Jul 25, 2017

Jerry came to my house in the early 1970’s. He had a beautiful psychotherapist with him. It was a meeting of about 7 people, mostly leaders of the hippie world associated with me and Glide Memorial Church. I was also president of Point Foundation at the time so, I assume he wanted money for his project.

I followed him for a few months after that to see how long he might still be attractive to the beautiful therapist. Apparently it didn’t last long.

As it turned out, the meeting was the result of Jerry wanting to put on a big event in Golden Gate Park for the benefit of CBS and to explain to the vast American TV audience that hippies were kind, gentle and wonderful people with creative ideas that would be good for America.

Most of us recognized immediately that his was just a PR scam for Jerry to gain some fame and recognition. But no one said that.

Everyone at the meeting found a polite way to say “No!” Hippies didn’t need publicity and certainly not the kind that we thought CBS would promote.

Jul 17, 2017

I expected about 1,500 and hired a hall that later became a cooking school on Polk and Turk. This was sometime in the mid 1970’s. I mark time by the main girl friend of the time. Since the one at that time lived in Marin, Annie, I know why I didn’t have a girl friend with me that night.

It was very easy to do anything in the hippie days. I reserved the hall, booked a few bands and got out the PR. I don’t remember doing it. It was so easy and automatic.

The night of the event, the bands were playing, the crowd was dancing. I had someone on the window taking the $5 or $10 that was the admission.

Then I was called away to talk to Abbie. We knew each other from encounters over the early hippy years. Abbie was around the corner in the back of a dark van on Eddy. It was about 7:30 in the evening. Abbie told me he was terrified of some danger and refused to come in and speak.

I said that I had gone to a lot of trouble to set up this event and he couldn’t back out. He said he was not going to speak and that it was dangerous for him.

He had all the outward appearances of a paranoid. A little shake and an agitated head.

So I walked back to the hall, made the announcement without explaining what an asshole Hoffman was. I told everyone they could get a refund at the front window. Which is where I personally went.

Giving out money is not a job for someone else.

It turned out that only 1/3rd wanted a refund. The rest were happy dancing.

Jul 07, 2017

Rev. Jones first came to San Francisco from Ukiah in Northern California sometime between 1972 and 1974. He brought much of his church with him.

He came to visit Glide Memorial United Methodist Church where I was the business manager and treasurer to meet and extend a hand to the local power, Rev. Cecil Williams. Williams was one of five ministers at Glide, the one designated to minister to the congregation. Cecil is black and a socialist preacher with a large and popular following, locally and nationally. We knew that Jones was an even more radical socialist in the guise of a Christian minister who also claimed to be black. In my eyes he didn’t have white skin but he also lacked any black facial features.

The first time he came to Glide to meet Cecil he brought two or three of his body guards. Big, heavy black men.

After the meeting Cecil and I discussed the foolishness of having big black obvious body guards. An attacker would easily know who to attack first. Cecil phoned Jones and explained the issue. He also offered that I would help find new guards and train Jones’s body guards.

I sent the head of my security team over to Jones’ ‘Temple’ at Fillmore and Geary to find the right people and train them.

I also heard rumors that Jones’ bookkeeping was attracting the snooping of the IRS. I got Cecil to again talk to Jones and offer my help in setting up a training session for accounting. Jones flat out rejected the offer. I heard from a few elderly black women over the next few years that the reason was that Jones and his Temple was getting 100% of their social security and disability checks and putting them on an allowance. I also heard the Jones was having sex with both women and teenage boys in his congregation.

Jones knew nearly everyone of importance in San Francisco; political, social and influential. Most of them were friends of mine.

At some point in late 1976 I got word that a friend of mine was writing an expose on Jones. Marshall Kilduff couldn’t get his paper (The S.F.Chronicle) to publish it so he found a local political magazine that would.

Jones was furious with the gossip and phoned all his powerful friends to quash the article; many of whom in turn phoned me. In every case we agreed the wise thing to do was ignore it and the story would be ignored. I went out of my way to have Cecil and my close friend Bob Gnaizda meet with Jones for lunch and explain the danger of attacking Kilduff and the magazine. He calmed down.

But the whole kerfuffle was the provocation that led him to try and resettle his congregation in the USSR. He was rejected there and settled for the jungles of Guyana.

Over the four or five years I knew Jones we met at events and gatherings three or four times a year. He was ubiquitous in San Francisco. I did notice that he was becoming slightly more paranoid. From my close observation, the source was a black-souled (white man) who was his number 2 staff person.

I forget the fellow’s name but he had formerly been a CBS news reporter in Los Angeles. He was with Jones from about 1975. Very close. I thought he was CIA. Whatever he was he constantly gave Jones up-to-date and often advance information about national and global news. Jones trusted him above everyone else.

I heard rumors about cocaine use. But that was not important. Nearly everyone was snorting cocaine at the time. Usually under control.

That was my direct connection to Rev. Jim Jones. I had a few more stories related to him, one was a concert and another was the reaction in San Francisco to his death. Stories I will tell later.

(the photo of Jim Jones and Cecil Williams was by Nancy Wong of San Francisco.)

Jul 01, 2017

There are vast numbers of new architectural uses for shipping containers. I see new uses everyday even in ‘hate change’ San Francisco. This is now 40 years after I first used a container for a Tea house.

Containers come in two sizes. 20 feet and 40 feet. The number of containers a ship holds is measured in the number of 20 foot containers because this was the first size. Like Qwerty on keyboards the earliest usage creates the 'standards'. Also, note containers are measured in feet because America was the first country to make extensive commercial use of containers. America continues to be one of very few innovative countries on the planet because we value meritocracy over hereditary classes.

What is most interesting for me is the 40 years it has taken to get so little innovation in housing and building. Take a look at the architectural uses of containers on Google images for containers. Most are rural with some commercial.

Our housing stock is very limited in urban areas by union control of housing design. Unions are always against innovation because innovation rewards merit. Merit is anathema to unions that only value seniority.

There are many innovations in architecture that developed over the past 40 years. We can now use Romex for interior wiring and plastic for water and gas lines; cheaper, more reliable, more durable and easier to install. But these improvements were slow to arrive.

I can’t complain too much because concurrent with this snail’s pace of change has been a 2/3rds decrease in fires. Part of this decrease is due to a decline in smoking, part to fire retardant mattresses. Most is due to better electric wiring and safer insulation and less flammable materials.

There is no genuine benefit to the slow innovation in architecture and construction; we would have been safer sooner.

But innovation restriction in housing is not the reason for the ten fold increase in real housing costs over three decades.

The reasons for the increase in home pricing is two earning households, the giant baby boom entering the workforce and the rise of Democrat-Luddite control of every American city. Democrats stand for Unions, no change, phony environmental rules and anti-progress.